API-crazy Amazon adds a new tool to boost support for enterprise AWS customers

Continuing its quest to make its public cloud services more attractive to enterprise users, API-enamored Amazon has added another interface to the mix. Businesses that pay for AWS support can use the new Support API to tailor their support cases and automate how they are handled.

“If you are signed up for the Business or Enterprise level of AWS Support, you can use this API to create new support cases, check on the status of open cases, and resolve cases. You can also add and retrieve information for existing cases. The AWS Support API also gives you access to best practices recommendations generated by the AWS Trusted Advisor. You can get the list of checks, access the latest results, and re-run the checks to refresh the results. This has been a much requested feature for customers who wish to integrate support case management into their in-house ticketing systems, and with the release of Support APIs we have delivered on this request.”

AWS support customers can also access their Trusted Advisor recommendations via this API. Trusted Advisor is a monitoring tool that gives customers tips about how to most efficiently deploy their AWS resources.

Enhancing customer support will be key to AWS in the future. Startups and a growing number of bigger, older companies use AWS for test and dev. But when it comes to big production deployments, the knock on Amazon’s public cloud infrastructure is that, when it comes to deploying big, important applications, it may not always be the most trusted — or even the least expensive — venue. That’s why Amazon is doing its best — with its AWS: Reinvent show and new tools — to show AWS as not just cost-efficient, but more importantly a flexible and reliable site for production work loads.

This is a great step forward by Amazon AWS to help extend their efforts to ease Amazon adoption. It is great also for vendors and partners that can rely on Amazon for additional core capabilities to come out of Amazon and for Amazon partners and its eco system to extend AWS’s core offerings into the multiple customer scenarios that consume AWS services.